Everything had worked out so fine, so nice, so natural, to the point where he had even stopped thinking of going on the mission. They could replace him easily enough.
That beautiful, deep brunette . . . and then she'd gone back to "the older guy," the one she had "no serious relationship with." Just up and disappeared out of his life.
That made it easy for him to score high on the tests, easy to devote himself to becoming part of the Dark Star itself. He hadn't thought anything but cold, technological thoughts for a long time.
But lately . . . women. And especially a certain woman. Occasionally a part of him would stir with a violent internal tremor and cry, Diane, Diane!
"Easy." A hand came down gentle, firm on his shoulder and his head snapped around, upward. "Easy, Boiler." Doolittle said it softly.
Boiler let his emotions simmer, quiet, evaporate. Then he eased his hand carefully out of the slot, began tightening the bolts on the panel.
"I can't find anything wrong with the reconstituters, Lieutenant. And the tubing connections seem firm."
"It's all right, Boiler. It's all right. Maybe it'll clear up. There might just be some accumulated blockage in the system. Let's go get something corrosive to eat and see if we can't clear it out."
Boiler looked up at him and then smiled ever so slightly—as much as he ever smiled. Both Talby and Pinback were certifiably nuts, but what about Doolittle? He couldn't figure the lieutenant out. What did Doolittle think about behind that Assyrian beard and Egyptian stare? What was he thinking about now, looking down at Boiler and not really seeing him?
Were they really on this last bomb run, the last run before they could start the long, lonely journey back to Earth? Or on some journey less profound and more internal—like Boiler's own?
He shook his head once and tightened the last bolt. Leaving the driver carelessly on the floor, he followed Doolittle up the near ladder.
His thoughts shrank to a tiny ball and normal emotions replaced personal ones as Pinback joined them.
"Hey, guys. Guys?" Pinback began brightly. "You know the alien? The Beachball? Well, it attacked me, guys! Twice, and I tried to tranquilize it but I ended up killing it. But not because of the tranquilizer. That's the interesting thing about it, you know?"
Doolittle led them through the door to the combination galley and dining room.
"Hey, yeah, this is a good idea, Lieutenant," he blabbered. "I'm kinda hungry, too. Well, anyhow, I shot it with the tranquilizer gun and it just spewed out gas like crazy and shot around the room like a punctured balloon. I guess its insides were mostly just that, plain old gas. It was just filled with gas."
This information was not met with a barrage of questions on the part of Doolittle and Boiler.
"Hey, guys, how could it live and just be filled with gas?"
"I wonder what we got to eat today?" Boiler grumbled.
"I thought I was gonna die. I was hanging to the bottom of the damned elevator for twenty minutes."
"Probably chicken again," Doolittle theorized. He had long suspected that the menu for the Dark Star had been planned by more than one colonel.
"I probably saved the ship," Pinback continued excitedly. "Why, that thing might've . . ."
The kitchen-dining area was not very big. The men were not required to eat their meals there; it was merely suggested, since the area was equipped with powerful suction devices and cleansers that gleaned every drop of spilled food for reconstituting.
There were a couple of seats and three blank walls facing a fourth. That wall contained machinery as complex as anything on the bridge or up in the astronomer's dome. Concentrated food was prepared here, waste products finally recycled into new food and drink.
". . . could have done some real damage!" Pinback finished.
Boiler was down now, really down, after his internal outburst of a few moments ago. "God, I'm really sick of chicken."
It was beginning to dawn on Pinback that his account of an overwhelming victory over the rampaging forces of alien malignancy were generating something less than an ecstatic response on the part of his audience. He folded his arms and retreated into the inevitable pout.
"Well, if that's the way you feel about it, then I just won't talk about it anymore."
"Hey, that sounds like a fine idea, Pinback," Doolittle observed. He moved to the service oven and punched the DINNER call switch three times in measured succession. There was a click, a quiet whirr that lasted for several seconds, and then the door slid aside.
Doolittle peered in, wrinkling his nose as he got a whiff of the heated liquids inside.
"Chicken," he muttered. He thumbed another switch and the door closed. Once more he activated the call button thrice. Another buzz, another whirr, a different smell.
"Ah, ham." Either the machine had finally learned to read their discontent or else they had simply gotten a break. Why so much chicken had been programmed into their diet was beyond Doolittle's imagining.
Actually, the only difference between the "chicken" and "ham"—or steak, seafood, or meat loaf they were offered—was in the artificial flavoring, since they were constantly consuming the same basic series of protein-carbohydrate-sugar solids. And since all the liquid concentrates looked the same, the psyche boys no doubt concluded that taste variety was important.
Why, then, this unnatural preponderance of processed fowl? Doolittle suspected that, like everything else on the Dark Star, there was a kink in the kitchen computer too. But that was one piece of instrumentation he didn't want to chance fooling with. Not as long as it kept them alive.
Attempts at reprogramming the flavoring in their food might result in even worse offerings. They might get oyster stew for a month, something that had happened several years ago. Doolittle had nearly starved. He did not like the taste of oyster stew, or the look of oyster stew, or the smell of oyster stew.
Unquestionably, Doolittle was afflicted with an anti-oyster bias rooted deep in childhood neuroses.
That didn't increase his fondness for chicken, however.
Thirty years of schooling come to this, he mused. A superbly trained technician and here he was, his mind reduced to debating the demerits of chickens and oysters. God, the workings of a technological society!
Talby was the only one who didn't care. To Talby, food was so much fuel, something that distracted him from his primary task of observing the universe. Something to be gotten over with as fast as possible. A necessary if irritating activity, like going to the john or sleeping.
Juggling the three packages because of the heat, he removed them from the oven and handed one each to Boiler and Pinback.
"Dinner, fellows."
"Chicken again?" Pinback asked, staring doubtfully down at his package.
"Almost, but no—ham for a change."
"Oh . . . good."
So much for pre-dinner conversation. They began peeling the foil from the tops of the metal containers. Each tray-shape held four transparent plastic packages of concentrated liquid food.
Doolittle tried to open his own without looking at the contents. A man could lose all his teeth in space—through calcium loss, say—and still survive in excellent health, thanks to this diet. But you wanted something to sink your teeth into after a while. They had experienced no calcium loss and had perfect artificial gravity. Therefore Doolittle felt he had a reasonable complaint. There was no reason why the corps could not have provided them with some real food.
But the astronauts had all asked that before, and the reply was always the same: It was wasteful. Crumbs always got lost. Bones were sheer space-takers, as were skin and fat and gristle—except in proper liquid portions. On the other hand, the concentrated liquids were neat, there was virtually no waste except for occasional spilled drops—and even these were recoverable—and they could be rapidly and easily recycled. Furthermore, they were exceedingly simple to prepare.
All of which Doolittle recognized and none of which he agreed with. Had there actually
been a time when he had felt that the overflavored concentrates tasted good? Or had that, too, been another lie to get him on the mission?
Now more than ever he regretted the explosion which had cost them Boiler's supply of real food. "Swiss cheese and knockwurst and thick gooey peanut butter," Boiler had said, and more. Doolittle suddenly, surprisingly, found his mouth watering.
That was it—think about Boiler's lost cache while slurping down this oily mess. Think about rye bread and onion rolls, and hot corned beef with mustard.
He tore the corner off one of the plastic tubes, dropped it in the proper recycling receptacle (inorganic), and began sucking at the liquified vegetable inside.
The thoughts seemed to help a little . . . split pea soup and crab gumbo and turkey gravy . . . though he would have traded his next week's rations for a single thick, greasy salami.
"Hey, Doolittle." Pinback was sucking on a tube of blue fluid.
"Yeah?"
"Think we'll ever find any real intelligent life out there? I mean, the Beachball had something, but it wasn't real intelligence." At least I don't think it was . . . I hope it wasn't, he thought silently.
"Out where?" Doolittle didn't look up.
"Oh, you know . . . where we're heading now. The Veil Nebula region."
The frustration and boredom and reality of twenty long years in empty space found expression in Doolittle's terse reply. If someone back at Earth Base had told him he would have felt this way, been capable of voicing such words at any time during the mission, Doolittle would have laughed at him.
But the sentiment came easily now, with a casual bitterness he barely noted.
"Who cares . . ."
7
TALBY STEPPED CAREFULLY down the ladder and headed purposefully toward the seldom-used corridor deep in the center of the Dark Star. The green glow of the lights set in the walls and ceiling marked the way to central computer.
He could have gone forward to the control room-bridge and used the annex there, but he wanted to check out something on the main computer itself. Besides, the central computer room was actually closer to the dome than the bridge. And he didn't see the need to alarm the others. Besides, they were enjoying their dinners now. No point in disturbing them unless the problem turned out to require their help. He was uncomfortable down here. Odd how nervous he became these days, away from the friendly stars. There had been a time when he'd felt perfectly at home within the ship. A long time ago.
"Back, Talby," the heavens whispered. "Come back."
"It's just for a couple of minutes, that's all," he murmured to himself, "Only a couple of minutes. But if there's a possibility of a serious malfunction, then I have to check it out. You understand that, don't you?"
"Come back, Talby . . ."
"I have to . . . because I don't think Doolittle or the others will. They don't care anymore."
"Back, Talby," a red giant whispered, a titantic voice roaring in his brain. "Back to us, Talby," replied a mild sun not unlike old Sol.
A ghostly quartet moaned at him with a combined voice like rising wind over a lake—a remarkable quaternary system of four stars circling about one another.
He had to check out the indicated malfunction. A switch, and the double-shielded door slid aside.
"Hey," said Pinback, pausing in the middle of a tube of dessert, "did I ever tell you guys how I got on this mission? Did I ever tell you?"
Doolittle indicated the tiny bottle on the table, and Boiler passed it to him. It consisted of auxiliary flavoring, and the meals computer changed its contents daily. He tried it in one tube. Vanilla today—interesting, even with the potatoes.
"Yes, you did, Pinback," he replied.
But the sergeant was off, and nothing short of catastrophe could stop him.
"It's very strange, you know, how it happened, but—"
Boiler groaned softly. "There he goes again."
"Don't get excited, Boiler," Doolittle advised. "It won't do any good and it won't shut him up. He's got to finish."
Boiler turned away.
"I wasn't an astronaut to begin with, see."
Wait a minute—what was he saying? Of course he had been an astronaut! Then Pinback smiled inside. Might as well get the crazy story out. It was only a dream, of course. Just a weird dream that had been repeating itself over the years. It seemed very real, but naturally most dreams did.
Still, it was peculiar that he should find himself repeating so many times. At least it was amusing. And he seemed to be having it less and less now.
"See, to qualify for astronaut rating, you had to score at least seven hundred on the Officer's Corps SARE's," he explained. "And I made fifty-eight . . . but I wanted to stay in the program. So they put me into liquid-fuel maintenance on the launch pad, working with the boosters for the starship.
"The boosters were liquid fueled, of course, since the Dark Star couldn't use its overdrive field within the Earth's gravitational influence. It was an important job and—"
Boiler glared back at him, but this time it failed to intimidate Pinback, just as Doolittle had indicated.
"Ah, naturally I was . . ." Pinback was aware of Boiler's unpleasant scrutiny and strove not to look at him, ". . . ah, really disappointed. I wanted to be an astronaut in the worst way, and I don't think those tests ever really measure your capability . . ."
"He told us this," Boiler mused while Pinback rambled on, "four years ago last, didn't he?"
"I mean, you know, I'd always had this urge to help push back the frontiers of space, get habitable systems ready for the colony ships. Anyway, I was on duty on the pad when they were getting ready to launch the ship . . . the Dark Star."
Doolittle sipped at the last of his dinner. "No, I think it was four years ago."
". . . I was checking out the fuel lines on the big KG tanks at the time . . ."
"That's what I said," a puzzled Boiler commented. Doolittle looked over at him and frowned slightly.
". . . And this astronaut came running out from behind the crew-isolation shed. He was stark naked, and he had his starsuit in one hand and, well, I evaluated the situation and immediately surmised that he was insane.
"He threw his starsuit on the ground. Then he saw me and gave me this really funny look, you know, and then I was sure he was insane, which really bothered me, because those guys are supposed to be about the stablest people there are. Then he opened the lid on the KG tank and jumped in." Pinback's tone turned earnest. "He was holding his nose, but I was sure that wouldn't make much difference, guys, because as you probably know, liquid KG is kept at about minus two hundred and twenty degrees Centigrade and is pretty corrosive stuff besides.
"Well, I was pretty surprised, I can tell you. I didn't know what to make of it. Like I said, astronauts are supposed to be super stable, and here this guy comes running along stark naked and jumps into my KG tank."
"Can I have some of that?" Boiler pointed to an unopened packet still resting in Doolittle's tray.
Doolittle nodded and handed the corporal the plastic container. He didn't care much for liquid rolls and butter.
"Well, naturally," Pinback continued relentlessly, "I was gonna try and save him . . . even though by that time, what with the super cold and corrosiveness and all, there probably wasn't much left of him . . . but I mean, what's a guy gonna do? I couldn't just stand around and do nothing, could I?"
He shrugged off the nagging feeling that he shouldn't be saying all this, that he'd gone through this insane dream too many times already. The feeling stayed with him, but he continued.
"So I put on his starsuit for protection, and I'm getting ready to go in after him . . . right, you guys? So what happened was that before I could leap into the vat . . ."
Doolittle gave him a sad look.
". . . this other fella came running along. He took a fast look at the name on the starsuit and says, 'Hey, Sergeant Pinback, you've gotta board immediately because we're gonna launch in twenty minutes.' "
"And I tried to tell him," Pinback continued, ignoring the lieutenant's comment, "that I wasn't really astronaut Sergeant Pinback."
What was that? Hold on there . . . you gone bananas or something, Pinback? Of course you're Sergeant Pinback. Who else could you be but Sergeant Pinback?
". . . but I couldn't figure out how to make the helmet radio work . . ."
"It's funny, you know," Boiler said, trying hard to remember exactly and rubbing his chin, "but I'm sure it was four years ago."
"Maybe," Doolittle admitted. It was beginning to bother him now. At first he had shrugged off these trivial lapses of memory. After all, in twenty years it was hardly reasonable to expect that you'd be able to recall every tiny little thing that happened.
But the lapses seemed to be increasing. And he wasn't alone in forgetting things. Boiler, too, was having trouble with the same memories—memories of things not directly connected with the operation of the ship. Pinback, poor Pinback, had problems of his own, as did Talby.
Doolittle could remember everything about his personal life before starting the mission, and everything necessary to the Dark Star's operation—but anything in between gave him increasing trouble. It was beginning to be as if he had had no personal life at all in the past twenty years. As though nothing had happened not involving the mission.
As though his mind now as well as his body was be coming an extension of the ship. A voice screamed inside him.
One more bomb! One more drop, and they could start home.
But would they get there in time . . .?
Talby was seated before the computer keyboard. He blended neatly into the machinery. The main computer screen faced him, illuminated from within, framed by the green glow of the computer-chamber lighting.
At the moment the screen was flashing an ultrarapid series of mathematical symbols and words for Talby's perusal. As usual, he had better luck following the symbols than the words.
It gave him some idea of where to look for the trouble. The computer's own tracing circuits had apparently been damaged. That accounted for its failure to locate and announce the trouble. It needed help—Talby's.
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